Alaska – I might actually be the deadliest catch

My exhaustion knows no bounds. The subtle hint of it invades every fiber of my being. My eyes are swimming, I slur and stumble. It is because the only drugs I ever take, I take to get on planes. Damnable bouts of terror planes cause me…although up until this very last plane flight, I thought my fears were over. I was actually enjoying flying despite Jeffree scaring the living daylights out of me as we were taxing down the runway on the plane we nearly missed and saying “we’re not supposed to be doing this,” in a serious tone.

He was mocking the lady behind us who had hit my seat when I cocked it back while we were parked at the gate and snapped “not until ten thousand feet.” But holy FUCK, did he scare me. I’m not religious but I have superstitions and mathematics. Its the same thing.

Whether we were supposed to do it or not, we did it. My weekend was hopefully to consist of hawking a plethora of pink tshirts to eager fans with money burning a hole in their pockets, flicking faders and tweaking pots for maximum clarity and volume, and selecting the most artfully costumed homosexuals for a personal appraisal by my august roommate. Actually, Jeffree isn’t a fan of uberqueer fan boys and doesn’t really hit on people at his shows but goddamn if I didn’t get some rad word use out in that sentence. How I spent my weekend was mobbed by kids who literally wanted to touch me because I knew Jeffree. They asked the same five questions, all of which I thought were common knowledge.

1) What is his favorite color? (Pink.)
2) Does he like boys or girls? (He loves dick like Anna Nicole loves TrimSpa.)
3) Does he wear a lot of makeup? (Look at him and answer your own question.)
4) Is he hot without makeup? (He looks like Tom Cruise except, you know, attractive.)
5) How did he get so famous? (He’s good at marketing.)

Now, I’m used to people going crazy for him, even to heights of screaming and general fannishness that is usually reserved for fans of bands with a heavy rotation video or radio single. But Alaska was like an N*Sync reunion. People just parked it by my merch table (we didn’t fly out Michael Merch for this but he’ll be at Cindi Lauper, don’t you worry!) and fired off questions with the tone of aspiring journalists in between repeating “you actually KNOW him?” with such wide eyed wonderment that I started to wonder if we were talking about the same person. I mean, Jeffree is mad cool and I love him to little bits and pieces but I don’t think any one person is so cool that coolness just slides off their bodies and envelopes their friends in a aura of cool so massive to that every 10th girl asked “can I touch you?”in the hopes that the coolness might be third party transferable. But I have been wrong before.

I know it was more the excitement at seeing someone in a place that so rarely get shows than any sort of super-coolness on either of our parts but it was still really overwhelming. It was like a hint of what is to come, as his career continues climbing to heights we’ve both barely imagined. It was both extremely endearing and really annoying because I had a hard time actually doing my job with so many people crowding around just to talk to me. One girl even followed me to the sound booth and was trying to ask me more questions about Jeffree’s make up preferences (MAC) and gloomy v. hello kitty preferences (not a clue) while I was trying to run the extremely glitchy board. No matter how many times I told her I’d be happy to finish our conversation after the show, she wouldn’t leave and watch the very show she came to see.

And trust and know, the sound was a near thing. When we don’t have a full band, the sound comes off of a CD, which I think I have expounded upon before. I stand around and hit pause and play, occasionally leaping for a fader or EQ pot but mostly just watching Jeffree and the crowd. Prerecorded tracks are hella easy on an engineer, though something always goes wrong somehow anyway. Well, at this show, we didn’t have a CD player. So we hooked up the sound guys laptop but the outputs on the sides were shot. We didn’t get a chance to sound check because we got there so late so we’re panicking because the sound keeps cutting in and out as we’re trying to set up. Then its only going up in the left channel. We finally get it all to go but its only in mono and if anyone so much as breathes wrong on this cord, the sound is going to go out, period. I have to set up a bunch of chairs to block people from getting close to the booth so no one hits the fucking cord. The entire show, the sound guy and I are watching the cord and shaking, trying to EQ the vocals and get enough gain on the track that the CD is loud and blended without feeding back. I don’t think I’ve ever had to EQ so much at a Jeffree Star show in my life. But we worked it out and it all sounded fine. And the second day we used my laptop so all was well.

I didn’t get to meet any of the dudes from Deadliest Catch (boo) because when we weren’t at the show, we were pretty much sleeping. It was weird. It was light until midnight, then dark for 2 hours, then super bright again. It was pretty and there was snow on the mountains and yada yada but we all know I’m not one for vacationing or admiring the view. I want to work and move on to the next show. Relaxing is the least relaxing thing I can possibly do. We did, however, drive around and take in the view. I spent the time taking pictures for all of ya’ll on Buzznet and advancing the date for the Arizona shows.

Alaska is quiet and pretty and filled with a lot of really kind people, one of whom even gave me a back rub before I went to bed both nights, which really endears me to a location. Al and Cole from Bitoz were especially awesome and rather amazing cooks. Feeding me is always a way to really endear me to a place. But no matter how lovely, I’m glad to be back to work. I have a month left at the studio, officially, so I have to make sure everything here is totally solid, assist my boss in finding my replacement, and train whomever replaces me. Its both very sad and very freeing. I’ve committed myself to change, for better or worse. It is what I most fear but I have made myself take action.

I’m committed to my own uncertainty. Just like that cable, it could go out or go perfect. It all depends on me watching over it and making the right moves and tweaks at the right time. I’m a smart girl and I’m good at making moves. Let’s see if I’m worth all I think I am.